Understanding and using the @ sign on Twitter

Today is a first of many Blogging Quick Tips. Sometimes, I like to share detailed tutorials or posts (like yesterday’s tutorial on Passionfruit Ads) and sometimes it’s nice to have short tips you can quickly implement in your blogging strategy.

If you use Twitter, you already know that including the @ sign, followed by a user’s username, tags that person in your tweet. What you may not know is that where you place the handle dictates who sees your tweet. There are two different type of tweets using the @ sign: replies and mentions.

What is a Reply?

A reply is when your tweet starts with the username. Here is an example of a reply:

@blogambitions You’re so very welcome. Thank you for having an awesome blog! xoxo

(Jennifer’s such a nice lady) Because this is a reply, it only shows up in the home feed to me, @DeliberateMom, and anyone that follows both of us. If you see a reply in your timeline, you can click on the tweet and it will show the details of the conversation. This is a great function for when you don’t want everyone to see your tweets or you don’t want to flood all of your readers feeds during Twittter chats.

What is a mention?

A mention is anytime you use the @ sign in a Tweet. When the handle @username is used within the tweet, all of your followers can see the Tweet in their home feed. Here is an example of a mention:

Kristie Hill

Hi! I'm Kristie, but you probably guessed that. I'm here to help you with the technical, social, and business sides of blogging so that you can focus on the most important part of your blog: your content. You can learn more about me here. Go ahead and stalk me Facebook,Twitter,Pinterest,

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